43 Comments

I spent $300 on my Asus P6T (socket 1366) in December 08. I still use it today, only upgrading it with a USB 3.0 PCIe card and from a GTX285 to a GTX570, keeping it 'current'.

The i7-950 and 12GB of triple-channel DDR3 keep it competitive with the upper 90% of computers made today, so I feel it was a completely worthy investment.

Who else can honestly say they've had a computer for four years and have upgraded virtually nothing aside from the video card and still have performance competitive with the fastest computers sold today?Reply

Mobo has always had almost zero effect on performance to begin with, CPUs have been faster than most people need them be in the last decade or so, GPU is the only thing that matters.

This mobo is not expencive because it has any pluses in performance, but because of the extra frills and features it has... which are only worth it if you actually use them. I don't think I will need most of them currently, and can add them on to any computer if I decide to use them later on. So this mobo is not worth it for me.Reply

This is pretty silly, since A LOT rides on which CPU you're using and how overclocked it is. GPUs are DEFINITELY NOT the only thing that matters and this has been proven through hundreds of reviews and comparisons all over the net.Reply

Never crazy. My last build was 4 years ago. 790i SLI Ultra. I've kept him alive with GPU upgrades from 9800Gx2 in 2008 to GTX 580 3gb x2 in 2011, Memory upgrades from 4gb to 8gb. This extends life yes, but you get to the point of no return and then have to build again. I am at that place now. Mobo is very important. It is the ground floor on which everything else must stand. I have had a bad Mobo in past and can tell you that it does not matter what GPU you have if your mobo is poo. I want a feature rich, stable, OC able board with plenty of room for expansion. Price is what you pay for this. Well worth it. Why is it that no one moans (much) at $600.00 GPu but they do at $450.00 MB???? It is what it is. Where I see bad pricing is SSDs $500-600 big ones for a 512gb....Reply

I don't understand the inclusion of the 32GB mSATA SSD with this motherboard, even more so at the $450 price point.

As the article says, anyone paying that kind of cash can easily afford a bigger and faster SSD and the 32GB is barely enough for a Win 7 install. The only way I really see it being beneficial is if it came pre-configured to work as cache (using intel rapid storage tech or similar) but there would be no way for them to know which drive to speed up as there is no point in caching a fast SSD if one was installed as the OS drive.

I really like that is has a mSATA port to allow a user to install a small form SSD, but including a 32GB drive these days is simply too small for a standalone drive and the configuration to get intel RST or similar working is not for the novice user (or so I've heard).Reply

I agree the mSATA seems a frivolous extra although I would give two reasons; 1. Not big enough, 128Gb mSATA would be nice though 2. only SATA 3G, the latest mSATA cards are SATA 6G but sadly not got a board to support this yet.

If this is a true premium board mSATA should be SATA 6G then it would be truely quickReply

the current mSATA spec only supports 3G as it is required to be linked to the 3G PCH port per Intel specification. Additionally see the feedback above regarding the 32GB mSATA module. Lastly a larger capacity mSATA would have considerably increased the cost which was already high especially considering all the logic some covered and some not covered in the review.

Also would not in our analysis overall usage of mSATA is very low for users in the desktop space due to higher cost compared to standard 2.5inch SSDs. This is also why we integrated the solution to ensure a fully usable out of box solution for SSD caching.Reply

Yeah, I added a REVODRIVE 3 X2 (240GB SSD) to my Z77 build. It cost about as much as this motherboard but it doesn't need a puny 32GB cache to slow it down. My media is already on a NAS so 240GB is all I need for OS, software development and games.

However next year I will definitely buy the premium LGA 2011 version, hopefully it comes with a 64GB SSD so I can add a backup drive under it.Reply

The 32GB mSATA was integrated to allow for quick access to utilizing Intel SSD Caching functionality. While many users are adopting high performance SSDs the cost of higher capacities is till high and in addition limited. Mechanical drives still considerably outpace and outsell SSDs in integration in all price points of desktops. Having this 32GB drive integrated easily allows for you to "SSD Cache a 2, 3 or 4TB drive" this allows you to have a much smoother and quicker response experience from the mechanical volume.

While not noted the setup has also been streamlined in our utility to allow for a quick one click level of initialization for Intel SSD Caching or ASUS SSD Caching from the Marvell controller.Reply

So yes, there is "Thunderbolt", but a Firewire 800 Controller would probably be more useful, as there are way more Firewire devices in the wild than Thunderbolt.

Not sure how much the 82579V really can be called "server grade" either.The 82579V on the Gene-Z shouldn't be all that different, having the same designation, but you have to manually hack the .inf to get the driver to install on Windows server. Not sure what makes this one server grade, seeing as the broken .inf comes directly from Intel.

Checking the other NIC, that one is more likely to be server grade, it costs almost twice as much. Not sure who made that mix-up.Reply

This was my error. The 82583 is not server grade, but as a helpful reader pointed out via email, the 82571, 82572, 82574, 82576, 82580 and I350 are. Super helpful naming scheme to tell them apart... :)

Thunderbolt is capable if mimicking firewire and just about every other IO technology in existence. So there is no real need for the added PCB Real Estate or monetary expense of a 1394 chip when 1394b is something that never really caught on (SAD). Reply

Give up on the firewire. It's got USB 3.0. & USB 2.0. Anything you might need beyond that will either be Thunderbolt or some future USB 4.0. I've never needed Firewire. I've wasted money on a Firewire card, but that's not the same thing as needing it, now is it?Reply

There's a lot of Firewire Video stuff (I'm following the IEEE1394-Linux mailing list, and there is still development and occasional use in a variety of contexts) Also I have a FireWire CF-reader. Not to mention that it's still much cheaper than TB, and in the shape of FW-800 still bloody fast, thanks to physical DMA.

Also, at 450 euro, there's just no reason not to mark that check-box. Thunderbird is NOT a drop-in replacement. It's not like there's no space left on the back plane.

I actually had a look at the P8C WS yesterday evening, and it seems that that board is what this board should be, at half the price.

Two server grade NICs, FireWire, DVI out, support for ECC MEM and Xeons.No WiFi, Thunderbolt, SSD or PLX though, but then those are probably less useful to (me and) most people, than the aforementioned.Oh and it has 4x SATA less. But then 10x SATA is what my much cheaper GigaByte P55-UD5 has, and had years ago (Yes, they're all in use - Yes I'm looking at the WS because I've been having issues (kernel panics, NICs misbehaving) with it lately and server NICs and ECC probably are a good idea after all)Reply

I have to agree with others who are a bit confused why a 32 GB SSD was included. As for the rest of the board, I will keep an eye out for when this board starts dropping in price. It is bound to happen. As long as it doesn't take too long it could fit well into my near future plans.Reply

It offers considerably better performance first generation 9128 and 9120 and 9130 were not bad controller just limited in peak throughput but keep in mind the controller was put to market before Intel even had SATA6G PCH. Also keep in mind performance for real world usage ( boot time, application launch performance, copy performance is pretty similar between then it is only in benchmarks you will see a measurable difference. That being noted the x2 interconnect offers twice the throughput for considerably improved performance vs the x1 interconnect 9128 type solutions. This allows newer SATA6G drives to generally perform on about the same level as the Intel PCH ( peak performance being at / near or above 500MBs on fast controllers ). Additionally it has some specific advantages not noted in the review such as stacked SSD caching. This allows up to 3 SSDs to be stacked on a mechanical drive to continue to enhance its performance.

On any top price product certain features are necessary, useful or not, on a "has" basis.Minor omissions (in the would be nice category) would be a card reader in the front USB3.0 Device, and a PCIe expansion card with 2 firewire and 2 USB2 or USB3 plugs.

After all, too much is not enough, $450 should not require further shopping for minor add ins.The price, if you have full use for the "package" seems acceptable, not that I'll ever have it.Reply

I would have liked to see GPU rendering benchmarks with SmallLuxGPU or Blender. This board would be perfect for animation rendering with 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 for dual GTX 690 or 4 x PCIe 3.0 x8 for quad GTX 680.

The price doesn't matter if I get faster GPU rendering and better support for new technologies like PCIe 3.0 and Thunderbolt.Reply

There are a few TB -> Ethernet solutions out there, including an adapter from Apple. Though with two NIC's on the board, I'm not really use-case scenario for TB on this particular motherboard. I can only fathom fast external storage and at that point the user would be better off with a solid SAS card with external connectivity.

As for ECC, Intel does indeed limit their desktop processors. A handful of motherboards will support ECC if a socket 1155 Xeon is utilized. Though if ECC is critical, AMD's FX line supports ECC and up to the motherboard manufacturers to support it.Reply

I'd say that in the next five years I'll buy... 0 Thunderbolt peripherals. Heck I've only just been bothered to buy my first USB3 thumb drive. Others, however, will jump all over it to be special or actually have a 'genuine' use.Reply

There is room on the back of that I/O panel for PS/2. I've used USB keyboard adapters and its not the same as native PS/2 support. If having PS/2 on a motherboard bothers you, then don't use it and it will likely disable it's self in P.O.S.T.Reply

One comment about the temperature measurements, as it keeps being mentioned about the varying ambient conditions. Could you not change to a delta reading? So as to remove ambient from the issue? Obviously extreme variations in ambient should still be mentioned.

Bit-Tech.net do this on their reviews and it seems to make a lot of sense.Reply

I am very interested in both the Premium and Maximus V Extreme for my next build. I just can't decide which would be the better choice. The extreme overclocking features of the V are useless to me, but I do like that the mSATA is optional.

Hopefully a review of the Maximus V Extreme is in the works and it will be compared to the Premium.